Indecisiveness kills…not speed …at least when it comes to competing for the BEST candidates. I want to sound the wake up call and talk about indecisiveness and lack of speed in the hiring process before it starts to cost your organization money…and make no mistake…not hiring the best candidates costs you in quality, productivity, sales, creativity…every aspect of your business! As an employee retention speaker, I also tell my audiences that indecisiveness also impacts their employee retention. Keep the following thoughts in mind:
- The market is no longer an employer driven market. Anyone remember 2008? It was truly a candidate’s market back then. If you took your “sweet time” hiring…even a candidate who was merely GOOD was gone by the time you made a decision. We are starting to see shades of that now.
- The size of the company does not matter. Candidates are not wowed by the big company name any longer. Particularly the current generation. They are looking at opportunity…growth…flexibility…ability to make decisions…autonomy…challenge etc. The same things that are integral to employee retention strategies are integral to recruiting. In fact…they look at companies that can’t move things along and that seem to “drag their feet” in the hiring process as inflexible, indecisive and not having it “together”…in the eyes of many millennials, they view companies like that as either arrogant or inept!
We will be going to go back to a highly candidate driven market in the next few years. In fact, we are already seeing it with high potential people. Unfortunately, many organizations have forgotten the lessons of the past and gone back to their old thought process. They have convinced themselves that they can take their “sweet time” when making a hiring decision. If you start your hiring process and drag your feet, the best candidate will be gone. Why? Because everyone wants the best candidate! Smart companies recognize that fact and make decisions promptly and, as a result, steal the best candidate right out from under the noses of even big name companies that think they have an edge in the hiring process because of their size.
Want to gain a recruiting and employee retention edge in a candidate market…or for that matter in any market? When I work as an employee retention trainer, I tell leaders to be decisive! You will find yourself beating out even the “biggest” and what people consider “the best” employers because, in most cases, they are slow and indecisive. In this case the belief that “speed kills” is wrong. In fact companies with speed will be the ones that thrive in the areas of recruiting and employee retention in the candidate driven market that we will face in the future!
